Chapter 5, Part I - Rivoli Theater, Monmouth, IL

Our second show was last Saturday at the Rivoli Theater on Main St. in Monmouth, IL. It is an old theater complete with Lighted Marquee, Ticket Booth, and a Balcony. This guy Paul, bought it and now he has all sorts of music shows there. Other than a few glitches, the show went great. For one thing we had an equipment failure before the show started. Let me explain...

At the first show, the American Trilogy was the climax of the show. Al's outfit has an american flag on it. We play three patriotic songs, and during the final one, there is this huge flag that unrolls from the ceiling. We hit a few more dramatic notes and BOOM, the pyrotechnics go off. The crowd is standing and clapping. Let me tell you, there's not a dry eye in the place. Well okay, there were maybe one or two dry eyes, ............................but that's all!

But, at Legends, we have the luxury of the garage door opener thing that unrolls the flag. At this second show, we spent a fair amount of time wondering how we were going to unveil the flag. We finally decided to hang the flag up behind us, and cover it with a black tarp. Then one of us would just reach up, and pull the tarp off. Great idea, right?

The flag is huge, so we had it lowered while we hung the tarp over it. Then we would pull the ropes that the flag was hanging from, and it would raise up to the height we wanted it. As soon as we would pull up, however, the tarp would decide that it would stick with gravity and stay on the ground. We, would lower the flag, re-equip the flag with the tarp, and begin the process all over again.

We used Clamps and Velcro at first, but it kept falling off. Once it did hold alright, but then Al decided that it wasn't straight. He pulled on one side of the tarp and it came back down. Hey, this is why Elvis never set up his own shows. Elvis had people. Al has us. He's in trouble. :)

So, we finally used this extra wide duct tape, and it held pretty well. Until about twenty minutes before the show! I kept telling Al that if the tarp fell while we were playing, we should just go straight into the American Trilogy. We got a good laugh out of that. At 6:45, As we were sitting down in the dungeon (think Silence of the Lambs) getting ready, someone came downstairs and told us that the tarp had fallen off the flag. The crowd had gathered, and some of the people had been there since 6:00. Al was in full costume, and we were all getting dressed. So we sent Paul out to recover the lost tarp. We just decided to play the whole show with the flag showing. It's all good.

The Second thing that went wrong was that as I was playing and singing Wild World I found out why Dad always runs his guitar cord through his strap. First off, let me tell you that During the first show, Wild World was the most difficult part for me. It was right at the beginning, and the show was all cake after that. So, I was looking forward to just singing the song and getting it done with already.

It starts off fine. At the end of the first verse, I stepped on my cord and pulled it out of my bass. My first reaction was to stop singing and reach down, grab the cord and plug it back in. But, I resisted, and finished singing the line. Before the start of the next line, I reached down and grabbed the cord. As I started singing again, I casually plugged the bass back in just in time for the chorus.

After that, the show went great. Al had the crowd in the palm of his hand. Jason was excellent, as usual. There were a few parts that he played that I didn't remember hearing the first show. Maybe the mix was just different, or maybe he changed the parts around. Maybe a little of both. Bruce rocked the house. Literally. The drums were on this riser-on-wheels. At one point, I looked at it, and the whole thing was jumping and bouncing to the beat he was playing. Dad was rockin' it out, as well. There was this solo he played where for the last few beats of the section, the band stays silent. Some guitarists would love to fill that break with the fastest lick they know, but my Dad, at the end of this killer guitar solo, played one final chord and stayed silent with the rest of us. It was tasteful, and made the song sound sweet when we all kicked in seconds later.

There were parts that were more sloppy than the first show, but it sounded tighter in others. All in all I think it was just as good of a show. Of course this is only the second one, I'm sure after a hundred shows, I will be a little more critical. Hopefully you'll stick around and listen to me tell stories about them all.

Thanks fer tha read, yuck, yuck!
Isaac